Slashdot Mirror

A number of manufacturers provide website demos of their phones. For example, I bought a phone this week, for the first time doing so on-line rather than in a store. I was comfortable doing so because Sony provides a demo of the phone (the T610) on their website. In addition, the provider to which I have switched, T-Mobile, provides demos of the phones on their site.

It ain't as good as the real thing. Just yesterday -- after ordering my T610 but before getting it (I'm anxiously awaiting its Monday delivery) -- I saw a T610 in person for the first time. I was surprised at how tiny that it was. But there were no surprises -- it functioned just as the demonstration showed that it would.

-Waldo Jaquith

Nearly all of it, in 1996. (I broke my feet, and so I'm missing MA, CT and VT.) I actually carried a laptop and blogged it (although we didn't have that word then).

-Waldo Jaquith

I now present you with your own link for your perusal. http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/14/19 20236&mode=thread

Don't look now, your agenda is showing.

I already linked to that in my original post -- that's what you were replying to in the first place. My Ask Slashdot submission asked if my interest in OSS and belief that it has a place in government was something that would be useful in a campaign. The answer was a resounding "no," and that was that. That's not an agenda, that's a question.

I can't make this clearer: I have only once addressed the topic of OSS in my city, using the exact words contained in the speech to which I linked. You can attempt to invent alternate truths, but it's getting a bit silly at this point.

-Waldo Jaquith

In a short speech to the Charlottesville (VA, USA) City Council last week, I proposed the consideration of open source via an internal bid approach, considering the results alongside traditional proposals. I haven't gotten any results or response yet (it's only been a week, after all), but based on the thoughtful nods and scribblings of the councilors while I was talking, I feel good about it. :)

I'd be interested in hearing if anybody else has convinced their municipality to consider the use of open source on a project-by-project basis and, if so, how they went about it. I'm not so naive to think that a mere speech will do the trick, so I'll need some ammunition for the follow-up.

Hey, funny -- this really follows up nicely on the Ask Slashdot on the topic that I submitted a year and a half ago. :) Hey, and I keep my campaign promises, too...even though I wasn't elected. ;)

-Waldo Jaquith

"A spampoena is an overbroad subpoena of dubious validity 'served' by email to unnamed recipients throughout cyberspace. The first spampoena was deployed last January in the DeCSS / MPAA case; the second was just sent out in the matter of CPhack / Cyber Patrol. We may dearly desire that, quashed forthrightly, it will be the last ever served. A judge in Boston -- in a hearing at which no defense attorney was present -- granted a subpoena requiring that a Canadian and a Swede remove certain content from their Web sites. The lawyer for Cyber Patrol's parent company requested and reportedly received permission to 'serve' copies of the subpoena by email to hundreds of unknown others in all parts of the world. Several hundred of the spampoenas have been mailed (and fewer received). Here is an example. The ACLU's motion to quash the subpoena concludes:

"'The subpoenas must be quashed because they were not properly served, because they violate the geographic limitations of Rule 45, and because they impose an undue burden... that raises significant constitutional questions. More fundamentally, they must be dismissed because they are in aid of an underlying case that itself must be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, lack of personal jurisdiction, and mootness. It is improper to impose on a third party the burden of any subpoena -- particularly one that raises a host of thorny privacy issues -- in aid of a case that does not belong in this Court in the first place.'"

It's neither the wireless aspect nor the Internet connection that's of interest to me, it's the BBS-like community that has come to exist around the network. I have no idea if anybody would want to use this lacking an Internet connection, but the community network aspect is fantastic. If this weren't hooked up to the Internet, concerns of security problems would drop tremendously, no doubt making adoption even simpler.

I guess I miss the old BBS community. Heck, I know that I miss it. Security was definitely a concern, but I knew just about everybody using my BBS. Or if I didn't know them, I'd get to know them at one of our monthly get-togethers. I've tried to move towards recreating the old community with cvillenews.com and a free community mailing list server, which is a start. But the concept of closing these off to the Internet at large and localizing them is fascinating to me.

Has anybody else set up an isolated metropolitan network? Any success?

-Waldo

Just take the total and write it to a file that contains only the total. Every time that the page is loaded, have it check the timestamp. If it's less than n hours old, show the cache. Otherwise, re-grep the log and write the result to the cache and start anew.

That's how I do it, anyhow.

-Waldo

At www.waldo.net/misc/codered I set this up this afternoon. I've personally alerted the owners of several of these IPs, but I hope that the public viewing may lead to them disconnecting their machines. <fingers crossed>

Oh, yeah, I did it in PHP, of course. :)

-Waldo

doh

http://waldo.net/misc/hellmouth1.pdf

I've made one. Just a quickie. It's at http://waldo.net/misc/hellmouth1.pdf/A& gt;.

I hope this isn't A Bad Thing(tm). If this were written by anybody else for any other publication/website, I wouldn't go making a PDF of their content. But given the story and website, I imagine that it's A-OK.

-Waldo

This really disgusts me. First we're told by Mattel that we have to cease-and-desist (I've gotten good at spelling that in the past few months), given a little legal piece of paper that says that we are legally obliged, by the word of the court, to take down our websites.

Then we're told, months later, that the case-and-desist doesn't apply to us, because our names didn't specifically appear on that piece of paper. So do we have to abide by that piece of paper? Nobody's saying. But can we fight it? No, we can't. We are bound to a ruling over which we have no input. Parties, yet nonparties.

It seems plain to me this is abuse of the legal system on the part of Mattel/Microsystems. We're right back where we were, unsure if we're legally OK or not. I have no idea of where we'll go from here. But I do know that I'm more frustrated with the American legal system than I've ever been.

I figure pretty much anybody that gets a cease-and-desist should have a say in the resulting legal case. I guess that must be unreasonable, but I definitely don't understand why.

-Waldo
cp.waldo.net

Here: http://waldo.net/misc/decss/

I've got my fake DeCSS page up. I'd put up a real one, but cphack is about all that I can handle at the moment. If I get a nibble on this site, I'll give a holler.

-Waldo

-------------------

Here: http://waldo.net/misc/decss/

I've got my fake DeCSS page up. I'd put up a real one, but cphack is about all that I can handle at the moment. If I get a nibble on this site, I'll give a holler.

-Waldo

-------------------

While backpacking, I used Linux in the mountains of Tennessee and Maine. It's really nice. I wish I'd used it in the Whites in New Hampshire, but my laptop was dead at the time. I bet it would be even better in Germany with some beer. :)

FWIW, I was telnetting into a server and using Linux there -- I didn't actually install it on any of my laptops.

-Waldo
-------------------

Amen. ZDNet and c|Net are utter shit. Neither has any sort of journalistic integrity, and both make me feel vaguely nauseous, like a trip to South of the Border or Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Let 'em buy each other. They can wallow in their collective filth. I don't give a damn.

-Waldo

This is all so stupid. Adding more TLDs is like building more roads. It just doesn't alleviate the problem.

.banc is totally masturbatory on the part of NSI. They should add .nic while they're at it. You know, since we've all seen this *overwhelming* demand for bank domain names.

If they want to add something useful, I like .ego. (Not my idea -- I'm sorry that I can't remember who to credit it to.) I honestly believe that a .ego TLD for personal websites is a fantastic idea. Hell, I don't want Waldo.Net. I'm not a network. I want Waldo.Ego.

I don't know how you'd go about making sure that businesses didn't get 'em, and I'd like to hope that it would be permissable to get ibm.ego, coke.ego, etc.

Short of a .ego TLD, though, I just don't think that new TLDs are a good idea. .web is *definitely* the stupidest that I've ever heard of. It would have been a good idea in '92 or '93, but not now. To most people, Internet == WWW.

To all of those that have said that this is a move on NSIs part, I offer a hearty 'Hell Yeah!'

-Waldo

Chances are there's a NDA on it, and chances are the NDA is in order to hide the fact that Mattel may have paid these guys off.

Hey, I wanna get paid off! I really missed the boat on this one. ;)

-Waldo

I have used half a dozen models of cellphones. My favourites are the Nokia 6162 and the Sony D-Wave Zuma CM-Z100.

Nokia 6162
Excellent phone. Dual-mode TDMA and AMPS. (SunCom, perhaps the worst provider ever, tried to convince me that it was tri-mode: "PCS, TDMA, and cellular." No amount of arguing would convince them that there's no such thing as PCS.) It's small, durable, and easy-to-use. Good OS that's easy to hack. (Type in *3001#12345#). I abused it pretty badly, and it held up really nicely. It was a bit big for me, though most would consider it to be small. The battery life was really good, and I very seldom had trouble with low battery life. It holds 200 names and numbers, and the flip cover on the 6162 is really nice. (The junior versions, the 6160 and the 5160, are good, too. But the 6162 is worth it, just for the keypad cover.) It's got a million stupid rings and two vaguely reasonable ones. It's embarassing having other hear some of the lame little tunes that chirp out of this phone.

Sony D-Wave Zuma
I love this phone. It long held the title of Smallest CDMA Phone. (I think the Nokia 8860 or the Motorola StarTac gets that title now.) It's just right in size -- I can sit down with it in my jeans pocket, and not have to adjust my pants. The signal isn't as good as the Nokia, largely due to its smaller size. It's a single-mode phone, though having CDMA instead of TDMA is great. This holds 99 numbers, and spares you from the games and other weird shit in the Nokia. I'm won over by this phone's cuteness, unusual look, and solid OS. (The jog dial is great, too.) The only downside is that the mic arm tends to get wobby and need to be replaced every 6 months or so. Gotta love that warranty. It's got just a few rings that are perfect for reasonable human beings that aren't interested in hearing the 1812 Overture when somebody calls. For those of you that need AMPS and CDMA, give it a few weeks and the dual-mode Zuma will be released.

You'd do well with either of these phones.

-Waldo

I'm maintaining a news site for the cphack situation right now at cp.waldo.net. Good way to stay updated, IMHO.

See, this post had some content. Yay, me.

-Waldo

I got my restraining order in the second wave of 'em, which hit Sunday. So I took the content off of my site, though I did not take the site down. I'm using it to distribute information about the case until I'm assured by an attorney that I can put the site back up, as I fully anticipate will occur.

I guess the tough & manly thing to do would be to leave the program up. But I just don't have the resources to handle a lawsuit, or to be found in contempt of court for refusing to follow the orders of what must be the most poorly-applied subpoena that I've ever seen.

I disabled logging on my mirror. If Mattel comes knocking on my door, I can honestly say that I don't have a damned clue of how many people downloaded the program, or who, or what IP, or anything.

I recommend that everybody else running a mirror do the same.

And at http://cp.waldo.net/.

When I did my AT hike in '96, I used a Motorola Montana and an array of laptops. (They kept breaking.) My best luck was using a Motorola Montana connected to a good-old-fashioned clunker of a Motorola flip-phone. I used a AA adaptor, but that shouldn't be necessary for you.

My favourite system was an Apple Newton with a keyboard. I don't believe that the Palm Pilot existed at the time. At least, not in a form as useful as its current one. As weight shouldn't be a problem for you -- unless you're one *hard-core* road-tripper -- any ol' laptop should do.

As for the national-dial-up, that didn't exist, save for shite like AOL and MSN, so I racked up some pretty serious long-distance. :)

Just plan on having a couple of days of beta testing. I hit the AT without having even used the finalised version of the system...took me about 100 miles to get it worked out. When it comes to connecting in hotels, it's always a gamble. I fried a modem like that. If possible, use a seperate line. I would just go down to the front desk, introduce myself, chat 'em up, and then ask if they had a line that I could plug my modem into. I was only turned down once. Frickin' Fontana Lake fascists...

Anyhow, have fun.

-Waldo

I am two things: A long-distance backpacker and a geek. So, in 1996, when I headed to hike from Georgia to Maine, I did what came naturally: I brought a laptop.

And another one. And another one. And so on. Some of them didn't last but a week. The Thinkpad's screen broke, the Compaq Aero's motherboard snapped, several others simply couldn't handle the moisture or the heat/cold.

Finally, in Maine, Texas Micro gave me a Hardbody. This, I was told, was the toughest laptop known to man. It was created to MILSPEC, intended to survive the harshest conditions, including wild swings of temperature, 6-foot drops onto rock, strong vibrations, and lots of moisture.

It lasted just under 2 days.

Am I down on the Toughbook? Kinda.

Obviously, they didn't make this notebook for me or for other unreasonable freaks. They advertise that broken notebooks cause loss of work time and money for corporations. These are created to withstand the rigors, of, say, the Beltway. I think that by most of our standards, this system is nothing special. It sure doesn't look like anything that you or I couldn't do with a Toshiba Satellite, some caulking and a little duct tape.

Anyhow, I found my ideal trail computer. It worked perfectly at all times, ran for days at a time on very few batteries, even with those pesky cell-phone data uploads, was nearly waterproof, didn't give a damn about jolts or drops. The system? A Newton. :)